Archive for the ‘Ku Klux Klan’ Category

At the height of its popularity, the Ku Klux Klan brought more than 30,000 of its members to participate in a parade in downtown D.C. on Aug. 8, 1925. (British Path)

The Ku Klux Klan was at the height of its popularity when more than 30,000 members racists and anti-Semites marching 22 abreast and 14 rows deep paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on Aug. 8, 1925.

White-robed Klan cheered on march in nations capital, read the front-page headline in The Washington Post the next day.

The gathering dwarfed the hundreds of white nationalists, Klan members and neo-Nazis who descended on Charlottesville Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The rally turned into a riot as the white supremacists clashed with counterprotests, leaving 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead and many others injured.

Nearly a century ago, the Klan was welcomed to segregated Washington by its white residents, as the breathless coverage in The Post demonstrated.

Phantom-like hosts of the Ku Klux Klan spread their white robe over the most historic thoroughfare yesterday in one of the greatest demonstrations this city has ever known, read The Posts account.

Led by L.A. Mueller, the grand Kleagle of Washington, the Ku Klux Klan booked 18 trains for their march and rally. Hotels filled with the hooded men. Lunch stands and tobacco shops quickly sold out. The Klan even brought their own ambulances to escort those felled by the August heat.

The Post story rhapsodizes about their parade pageantry but says very little about the groups espousal of hatred. However, it does criticize their parade skills: There were few drilled marchers in the parade. At times their lines, extending the full length of the Avenue, swayed hopelessly back and forth.

The Klansmen marched for over three hours before arriving at the Washington Monument grounds for speeches, only to be greeted by a torrential downpour.

Dont leave, Mueller exhorted. God wont let it rain.

But the rains came, washing out the demonstration, and many left.

The next day a Klan contingent crossed over the river to Arlington. They placed wreaths on the Tomb of the Unknowns and the grave of William Jennings Bryan. That evening 75,000 people witnessed many watching from roadsides and their back yards the burning of an electrically lit 80-foot cross at the Arlington Park horse grounds. The ceremony initiated some 200 new members into the hooded order.

The Klan returned to Washington to parade again on Sept. 13, 1926. However, this time only 15,000 less than half the previous years crowd marched.

To understand the prevalence of the Klan in the 1920s, try to imagine what the tea party on steroids would look like, said historian Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. That was the scope and power that the KKK had in the 1920s.

[Leo Frank was lynched for a murder he didnt commit. Now neo-Nazis are trying to rewrite history.]

Many of the hooded marchers showed their faces a rather telling indication that the group, responsible for lynchings and other acts of terror, could operate with impunity. At the time, the Klan boasteda national dues-paying membership of nearly 5 million men and 500,000 women. The shedding of the masks was a subject of internal debate for the group, a move that some felt would grant their organization added legitimacy and respectability.

You had many members of the KKK who were politicians senators, congressmen, statehouse representatives, said Kendi, and that only encouraged the members to appear publicly without their hoods.

Indeed, the 1924 Democratic convention was known as the Klanbake, because the party by a razor-thin margin voted against an anti-Klan plank in its platform.

If you were a member of the Democratic Party, a powerful member, you probably had some sort of affiliation to the KKK either publicly or privately, said Kendi. Though there were also members of the Klan in the Republican Party, they had most of their power in the Democratic Party.

The original Ku Klux Klan had fallen by the wayside after reconstruction, only to see its fortunes revived with director D.W. Griffiths 1915 movie The Birth of A Nation. President Woodrow Wilson screened the film twice for guests at the White House.

The revived Klan drew its members not only from the South but from the Midwest and industrial North and saw itself as the protector of white Protestant supremacy. In addition to African Americans, they hatedCatholic and Jewish immigrants and feared the Northern migration of African Americans.

They also saw themselves as great moralists. In additional to their campaign of terror against African Americans and ethnic minorities, the Klan broke up stills in the name of prohibition and flayed and flogged adulterers in the name of traditional family values.

Kendi sees parallels between the Klan of the 1920s and the alt-right that inspired the recent violence in Charlottesville.

When you have a set of circumstances occurring, like those over the last 40 years stagnating wages, immigration occurring, economic inequality growing it allows demagogues to say this is occurring because of diversity, because of civil rights for people of color.

These white supremacists are conditioned to believe this even though it flies in the face of facts.

Read more Retropolis:

Death of a devil: The white supremacist got hit by a car. His victims celebrated.

Georgias Stone Mountain park has denied the Ku Klux Klans request to burn a cross at the top of the mountain, where the second KKK was founded in 1915.

Joey Hobbs, of the Sacred Knights Ku Klux Klan, submitted a permit application request for 20 people to attend a cross-burning on top of the mountain, which is notorious for being tied to the KKK.

We will light our cross and 20 minutes later we will be gone, Hobbs wrote on the permit.

The Stone Mountain Memorial Association this week denied the request for a 21 October cross-burning and said in a statement that it condemns the beliefs and actions of the Ku Klux Klan and believes the denial of this Public Assembly request is in the best interest of all parties.

We dont want any of these groups at the park, quite frankly, John Bankhead, a spokesman for the association, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

He said the burning would have been an act of intimidation, in keeping with the KKKs history of burning crosses to intimidate black Americans, and that the park would not allow that.

The park, site of the second founding of the KKK, has a giant carved Confederate memorial of Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee, which was completed in the 1960s, decades after initial work was halted. There has been a spate of white supremacist rallies at the park in recent years, though they are often attended by more protesters than supporters.

The park clamped down on event safety after an April 2016 white supremacist gathering swelled with hundreds of protesters opposed to the rally, which was ultimately attended by just a few dozen white supremacists.

The association cited the April 2016 rally and said the cross-burning would require more safety resources than could be provided.

The recent deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., might have been the largest and most brazen of such American gatherings in a decade or so. However, one of the constituent groups, the Ku Klux Klan, has emblazoned a long historical scar on Texas.

At one point during the 1920s, the group was politically and socially pervasive nationwide, almost a daily fact of life. Its Austin chapter had swelled to 1,500 members by 1922. It took a determined effort by crusaders such as future Texas Gov. Dan Moody to quell the tide.

The first Klan was born after the American Civil War (18611865) in the law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones in Pulaski, Tennessee, sometime between December 1865 and June 1866. It was founded by six Confederate veterans: James Crowe, Richard Reed, Calvin Jones (Thomas Jones’s son), John Lester, Frank McCord, and John Kennedy. The Pulaski Six, as they came to be known, allegedly formed the organization for amusement and to break the boredom of their small town. However, as Reconstruction policies took effect between 1865 and 1877, allowing African Americans to become more active in southern political, economic, and social life, local cells of the Klan, called klaverns, formed throughout the south and took on a different role. According to historian Eric Foner, the Klan went from being an amusement activity to “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy.”

Although the first Klan was less centralized than the second, explains Foner, it effectively aimed “to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.” To achieve these ends, Klansmen donned white-sheeted regalia that covered their bodies and masked their faces as they employed unseemly methods of intimidation, including rape, beating, murder, and lynching. Members of the so-called Invisible Empire relied upon secrecy and anonymity to avoid being caught and to create an environment of fear in which blacks and pro-Reconstruction whites had to live under a constant threat of violence.

In Virginia the first Klan’s life was brief. According to historian Allen W. Trelease, the Klan appeared in the Old Dominion in March 1868 andwith a few exceptionsdisappeared by the end of April, just a month later. Its presence was not, however, without incident. Margaret Newbold Thorpe, a teacher at a freedmen’s school outside of Williamsburg during this period, observed: The Ku Klux have been in our neighborhood, and we have received notice that they intend giving us a call [sic] Their outrages and murders have become matters of history; one of the missionaries in this part of Va.a New England man, a cripple, was dragged from his bed and over the ground to the woods and terribly beaten. The poor wife never left him, and took him back nearly dead. Klan-related violence also occurred in the town of Warrenton and Lee and Rockingham counties.

Virginia newspapers, in particular the Richmond Daily Enquirer & Examiner, helped to spread interest in the hooded order. In an editorial from March 26, 1868, the Daily Enquirer & Examiner lauds the Klan’s objectives and describes it as an organization which is thoroughly loyal to the Federal constitution, but which will not permit the people of the South to become the victims of negro rule. It is purely defensive, and for the protection of the white race, and has been rendered necessary by the organization of thousands of secret negro leagues, whose members have been stimulated to carry out the work of disfranchisement of the whites by the promise of pillage and wholesale confiscation.

News of this nature helped the Klan garner support throughout the state. While estimates of statewide Klan membership are unknown, the Daily Richmond Whig claimed that Richmond alone counted 4,000 members. However, after reports of Klan violence in Virginia, newspaperseven the Daily Enquirer & Examinerchanged their tone and, according to Trelease, ridiculed the Klan as an organization that “no one in his right mind took seriously.” With public support weakened, perhaps more so because the state was never truly under Republican control, the Klan’s foothold in Virginia slipped.

Congressman Benjamin Butler

The larger Klan collapsed in the early 1870s, in part because between 1870 and 1874 the U.S. Congress passed a series of laws limiting the organization’s activity. The first Enforcement Act, passed on May 31, 1870, enforced the implementation of the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave African Americans the right to vote. Provoked by that act, Klan violence only intensified during the elections of 1870. In response, Congressman and former Union general Benjamin Butler drafted what came to be known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The act made it illegal for two or more people to conspire with the intent to disfranchise someone else and gave the president the power to use military force and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to quell any civil disturbance that threatened a person’s or persons’ constitutional rights.

On October 17, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties in the northern part of the state, where the Klan was particularly violent. He was the first president to do so during peacetime. Most of the Klan disbanded when its members fled the state or were imprisoned. The destruction of the Klan in South Carolina reverberated throughout other states and caused the movement’s ultimate collapse, allowing Republicans to turn their attention away from the South and to other issues. In 1874, the Democratic Party took control of the House of Representatives. Three years later, after Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was placed in the White House with the understanding that all federal troops would be removed from the former Confederate states, the death knell rang for Radical Reconstruction. With the federal government’s face averted from issues of civil rights, Southern state governments were free to begin disfranchising African Americans through the passage of state and local segregation legislation, called Jim Crow laws, and to enforce such a process with outright violence and lynching.

While the first Klan was a distinctly southern white movement, the second and most popular Klanthe Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Incorporatedwas national in scope. Along with its traditional racial values and espousal of white supremacy, this national Klan defended what it termed “one-hundred-percent Americanism” and in this effort set its sights on what it deemed to be “un-American”: Jews, Catholics, organized labor, immigrants, the alcohol industry, and prostitution. Of the three distinct Klans, this was the most active and powerful, with a membership that peaked at several million in the mid-1920s.

The Birth of a Nation

The second Klan gained much from the mythologized legacy of the first. This mythology portrayed Klan members as chivalric defenders of civilization and gentility, and had been percolating in white America’s imagination during the years following the first Klan’s demise, thanks in part to popular fiction. Before 1915, no work was as powerful in spreading the myth of the Klan as that of novelist Thomas Dixon Jr., a sometime resident of Northampton County. Dixon dramatized white supremacy and the heroism of the first Klan in several bestselling novels including The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and The Clansman (1905), the latter of which Dixon adapted as a play. His romanticized view of the Klan sold so well that his novels, particularly The Clansman, helped to establish Doubleday, Page & Company as a major publishing house. But the apotheosis of Dixon’s work came in 1915 with the opening of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. A film adaptation of The Clansman and The Leopard’s Spots, Birth of a Nation became one of the most powerful pieces of pro-Klan propaganda. After a private screening of the film, President Woodrow Wilson allegedly claimed that it was like “writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true.” Whether Wilson said this or not, the quote was used to endorse and market the film and the Klan.

In the autumn of 1915, William Joseph Simmons decided to use the premiere of Birth of a Nation to inaugurate the second Klan with a cross-burning ceremony atop Stone Mountain, in Georgia. Simmons, an Alabaman who earlier in his career had tried his hand at ministry but was denied a pulpit because of “moral impairment,” was a paid organizer and member of several fraternal orders, including the Woodmen of the World. Claiming to have had a longstanding plan of resurrecting the Klan, Simmons borrowed from his work experience to incorporate the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as a centrally managed fraternal organization that would stand for “comprehensive Americanism.” When Birth of a Nation opened in Atlanta, Georgia, in December 1915, local newspapers carried advertisements announcing Simmons’s Klan.

With the United States’ entry into World War I in 1917 came powerful nativistic and anti-immigration sentiments in which the Klan found a purpose: the nation, explains historian David M. Chalmers, “had to be defended against alien enemies, slackers, idlers, strike leaders, and immoral women, lest victory be endangered.” While the KKK garnered only several thousand members during the war, white America’s fearful, angry mood continued after the Armistice in November 1918, cultivating an environment that was ripe for spreading the Klan’s message. Simmons signed a contract in June 1920 with the Southern Publicity Association to market his organization. To its current list of anti-American elements the Klan added “dope, bootlegging, graft, night clubs and road houses, violation of the Sabbath, unfair business dealings, sex, marital ‘goings-on,’ and scandalous behavior.” But as its membership grew, allegedly to as many as five million individuals, so did the Klan’s reputation for using violence to achieve its goals.

Ku Klux Klan Official

In the fall of 1920, Klan salesmen, called Kleagles, fanned out across southern states, including Virginia, to recruit members. During this time John Mitchell Jr.’s Richmond Planet and P. B. Young Sr.’s Norfolk Journal and Guide reported on and condemned the Klan, like much of the black press in other states, and white journalists Douglas Southall Freeman, of the Richmond News Leader , and Louis I. Jaff, of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, agreed that the Klan’s vigilante reputation merited condemnation. When the Klan started recruiting from Virginia’s smaller cities and towns in 1921, however, that reputation became a selling point. That summer, placards warning “Gamblers, Bootleggers, High-Speeders, Thieves, Crooks, Houses of Ill Fame and Proprietors” to leave town announced the arrival of Klan recruiters in Farmville and other localities. Reports of lynchings in Texas and other states confirmed the Klan’s vigilante appeal.

In September 1921, the New York World initiated a series, syndicated in papers nationwide, that exposed both the Klan’s violence and its shoddy leadership. The U.S. Congress followed with its own investigation. Sales of memberships plummeted and Kleagles, dependent on commissions, revolted. The Klan passed through several months of turmoil before resurfacing in the summer of 1922 with anti-Catholicism as its dominant theme and with growth in the Midwest outstripping that in the South.

John Powell

Events in Richmond during this period determined the fate of the Klan in Virginia. From its founding, Richmond Klan No. 1 had an anti-Catholic faction, and when respectable local officers followed the New York World’s revelations of the Klan’s disreputable leadership by suspending payments to Klan headquarters in Atlanta, the local unit split, with the anti-Catholics remaining loyal. The officers’ faction soon reconstituted itself as Anglo-Saxon Club No. 1 and under the leadership of Earnest Sevier Cox and John Powell backed agitation for a Racial Integrity Law that would protect whiteness against the threats that immigration and miscegenation purportedly posed. Klan loyalists took the Anglo-Saxon Club to court to regain their records, hoods, and robes. In response, members of the Club charged that the Klan, a Georgia corporation, had failed to register with the State Corporation Commission and was thus operating illegally in Virginia. The Klan was fined fifty dollars and nearly two years passed without official Klan organizing in Virginia.

“Pay-Your-Poll-Tax!!!”

By summer 1924, when newspapers reported renewed Klan activities in Virginia, national Klan leadership was on shaky ground. Hiram Wesley Evans had overthrown Simmons and assumed the role of Imperial Wizard. Evans was soon at loggerheads with David Clarke Stephenson, the powerful Grand Dragon of Indiana, where the Klan’s growth and power were unrivaled. Despite infighting on the national stage, by 1925 nearly sixty local Klan units had formed in Virginia from the Eastern Shore to the Appalachians, with all the state’s cities represented. According to Chalmers, the “centers of Klan strength in the Old Dominion lay in a series of growing, industrializing cities, most notably Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, Lynchburg, Danville, Hopewell, and Roanoke.” It was through these cities that such commodities as coal, seafood, lumber, tobacco, and manufactured goods were shipped and marketed, and in these cities’ factories that blacks and whites competed for the jobs to package, mill, and refine these goods. Klan membership in these areas became, in Chalmers’s words, “second only to church.”

In an effort to advance its members’ socioeconomic and ethnic views, the Klan turned to politics. In 1925, in addition to supporting a bill that would forbid the teaching of evolution in Virginia schools, the Virginia Klan campaigned against John M. Purcell, the incumbent Democratic state treasurer and a Roman Catholic. Klan members threw their support behind Purcell’s Republican opponent, John David Bassett, whom they styled “the 100% candidate.” Bassett lost the election, but performed surprisingly well in a state controlled by a very strong Democratic machine. The Klan tried to deny Purcell’s reelection bid in 1928 and also opposed Governor Harry F. Byrd’s efforts to make several statewide offices, including Purcell’s, appointive rather than elective.

Ku Klux Klan in Washington, D.C.

The Virginia Klan received its charter as a Klan realm in 1925, and Joel L. Baskin, a native of Mississippi, moved to Richmond to lead the realm as Grand Dragon. With Baskin at the helm, Klan activities in Virginia increased. In August 1925, unmasked Klansmen and Klanswomen from Lynchburg marched in Washington, D.C., alongside more than 30,000 other Klan members from across the country. In September 1926, 5,000 Klansmen and the Imperial Wizard himself presented a flagpole to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. College president Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler accepted the gift, but used the occasion to deliver a pointed lecture on the virtues of religious liberty and the evils of mob violence. In fact, it was the increase in Klan-related violence more than anything else that lessened the Klan’s popularity in the Commonwealth.

Incidents of violence directly and indirectly associated with the Klan after 1925 included kidnappings, floggings, and at least one lynching. In August 1926, a group of fifty masked Klan members forcibly removed Raymond Bird, a black man charged with an offense against two white women, from the Wythe County jail. Encountering little resistance from local authorities, the mob shot Bird, beat him, tortured him, and then lynched him. Appalled, the Richmond Times-Dispatch called upon the citizens of Wytheville to “press for a special grand jury to investigate this attack on law and order.” Only one member of the mob, Floyd Willard, was actually charged and tried for his participation in the lynching.

Newspaper Editor Louis Isaac Jaff

A few weeks later, on September 1, 1926, six hooded men kidnapped and interrogated Father Vincent Warren, a Catholic priest who taught black children in Princess Anne County. There was an outcry of support for the priest as the public pressured the Byrd administration to bring Warren’s assailants to justice. But despite support from Louis Jaff, who criticized the inactivity of local authorities in his editorials in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, nothing substantive was done beyond the passage of a local anti-mask ordinance. Jaff resolved to pressure Governor Byrd to put forward a state anti-lynching law.

Byrd and other white elites in Virginia were invested in maintaining white supremacy, but they were not fans of the Klan’s secretive nature and mob mentality or the violence that ensued from it. According to historian J. Douglas Smith, the Klan “threatened paternalistic notions of noblesse oblige that formed the foundation of Virginia’s claim to friendly race relations. In short, elites considered the Klan crass and embarrassing.” Caught between Jaff’s fiery editorials and his own desire to preserve white supremacy, Byrd moved with caution and much hesitation. While Byrd ultimately did write what became the Virginia Anti-Lynching Law of 1928one of the most stringent in the nationSmith writes that he did so “only after others had convinced him that such a measure would enhance the state’s reputation.” Whatever the motivation, the Klan’s days as a powerful organization in the Commonwealth were numbered.

Ballston KKK Band No. 6 Realm of Virginia

In 1930, the Washington Post reported a sharp decline in national Klan membership: in Virginia, membership amounted to only 1,593. Responding to this report, Klansmen from Ballston, Potomac, Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, Fairfax, Occoquan, and from Maryland and the District rallied at Alexandria, but only 188 robed members appeared, including the 26-piece Ballston Klan Band. Several Klans continued to meet in Virginia, with Roanoke’s Robert E. Lee Klan No. 4 probably the largest and most active of them.

Joel Baskin kept the Klan alive in Virginia through the Great Depression, shifting the organization’s focus from anti-Catholicism to anti-Communism. In April 1944, the U.S. Treasury Department sued the national Klan for unpaid back taxes; the Klan settled the case by disbanding. On May 24, 1944, the American Shore Patrol applied for a charter in Virginia. Investigation showed that its head was Joel L. Baskin and, despite its claim to be concerned only with immigration to the United States, it was a cover for his old Klan realm. The American Shore Patrol faded away before Baskin died in 1948.

The Klan was revived in the 1950s and 1960s to fight against the desegregation of public spaces and to block African Americans’ increased efforts to gain full civil rights. Between 1949 and 1952, a number of cross-burnings occurred in Nansemond and Suffolk counties. In the winter of 1952, Bill Hendrix, Grand Dragon of the Florida KKK, confirmed plans to reorganize the Klan in Virginia. The initiative met resistance in March 1953 when the General Assembly passed a bill, recommended by Governor John S. Battle, that prohibited wearing masks and burning crosses in public. Although there were occasional Klan-related incidentsincluding an August 1955 cross-burning on the front lawn of the home of Oliver Hill, who worked to desegregate public schoolsKlan activity did not again become evident in Virginia until the mid-1960s.

Poster for Klan Rally

In the spring of 1965, the United Klans of America sent Marshall Kornegay, of North Carolina, to organize in Virginia. The state had only an estimated 2,000 active Klan members in 1966 and much less Klan activity than in states to the south, but enough for the Richmond and Norfolk offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep a close watch. In the fall of 1966, unidentified individuals bombed an African American church in Richmond. Because the incident “smacked of ‘Klan-like’ activity,” civil rights groups such as the Virginia chapter of the NAACP pressured Governor Mills E. Godwin to officially condemn the Klan. In December he finally did, singling out cross-burning as a “reprehensible” act “long associated with the record of bigotry compiled by the Ku Klux Klan” that “must be stamped out.”

In the weeks that followed, the Klan tested Godwin’s mettle by holding rallies. But the weight of the political establishment was against them. With desegregation imminent and Virginia’s political leadership committed to finding and rooting out the Klan rather than ignoring it, Virginia became inhospitable ground for the Klan to flourish.

While the Klan still exists in the twenty-first century, it lacks the cohesion and numbers it once had. In 2007 the Anti-Defamation League reported a resurgence of Klan activity. In 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism in the United States, identified active klaverns in Abingdon, Powhatan, Martinsville, and Dungannon.

Fliers apparently distributed by the Ku Klux Klan have been circulating in the oceanfront community of Boothbay Harbor, according to a report by WCSH-TV.

The flier obtained by the Portland television station has Transgender stamped at the top in bold letters with a headline below it that reads, Is an Abomination according to the King James Bible.

It goes on to quote Dueteronomy 22:5 and adds a warning: Act now, before its too late. They are jeopardizing the safety of bathrooms across the nation for our women and children. This needs to stop.

The flier then urges readers to join the KKK. It says the nation has no future unless the KKK unites and organizes white Christian patriots.

The Traditonalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan takes credit for the flier, and have added their website address to the bottom of the flier.

Rev. Sarah Foulger, a local Boothbay Harbor pastor, told WCSH-TV that fliers have been found on Middle Road, Lakeside Drive and along Route 27. Foulger said the fliers were placed inside plastic bags with rocks and appear to have been thrown onto lawns.

In January, Freeport and Augusta residents were stunned when they woke up to discover Ku Klux Klan fliers outside their homes.

Those fliers, carefully folded and tucked inside plastic sandwich bags weighted with pebbles, were tossed at the end of driveways and near mailboxes of about two dozen homes on South Freeport Road. Those fliers urged people to call an 800 number that is the 24 Hour Klanline.

You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake! the flier states. Are there troubles in your neighborhood? Contact the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan today!

Two former prison guards in Florida, who were members of the Ku Klux Klan, have been convicted of plotting to killa black inmate in retaliation for a scuffle with another guard whoalso belonged to the hate group.

A jury in Columbia County, Fla., found David Elliot Moran and Charles Thomas Newcomb guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder afterthey were caught discussing their plans with an FBI informant, the state attorney general announcedTuesday.

At the time of their arrest in 2015, Moran was an officer at the Florida Department of Corrections Reception and Medical Centerin Lake Butler. Newcomb had worked there previously.

The third guard, Thomas Jordan Driver, also worked at the facility, which processes new male inmates into the prison system and provides medical care for prisoners throughout the state. He pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and was sentenced to four years in prison.

All three men were members of a well-known Klan affiliate called the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,prosecutors said.

These Klansmen plotted to murder a black inmate after he was released from prison, but swift action and clever investigative tactics on behalf of investigators foiled their plot and may have saved a life, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Tuesday. We will continue to work daily to ensure the KKK or any other hate-filled organization is unable to inflict violence on the citizens of our great state.

Attorneys for the defendants didnt immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Newcomb and Moran pleaded not guiltyto the charges in May 2015, according to News4Jax.

A sentencing date has not been scheduled. The defendants face up to 30 years in prison.

The convictions cameasPresident Trump on Tuesdaydefended his responseto the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville over the weekendthat left a counterprotester dead and dozens of other people injured. Trump is facing widespread criticism that he waited too long to condemn the hate groups involved and inflamed racial tensions by claimingthat both sides were to blame for the violence.

Prosecutors said the Florida prison guards plot to kill the black inmate was hatched at a Ku Klux Klanmeeting in the Jacksonville area in late 2014. Newcomb, Moran and Driver told an FBI informant who had infiltrated the groupthat Driver had gotten into a physical altercation with the inmate, according to a partially redacted affidavit released to reporters at the time of their arrests.

Driversaid the inmate had bitten him during the struggle, and he was worried about contracting a disease. The three men told the informant they wanted to see the inmate six feet underonce he was released, according to the affidavit.

After the inmate was released,Newcomb and Morandivulged the details of the murder plot in a conversation with the informant that was secretly recorded. The affidavit contains a partial transcript of the meeting, where they discuss abducting the man and injecting him with insulin to make his death look accidental:

Newcomb: I set that fishing pole like hes been fishing, and give him a couple shots, and we sit there and wait on him, we can kind of lay him like he just kind of tippled over into the water. And he can breathe in just a little bit of that water.

Moran:What do you what do you mean, you talk about taking him fishing or watching him?

Newcomb:Im talking about jerking his a up, putting him in the car and taking him down there.

Moran: Yeah, but does he fish?

Newcomb: It dont matter.

Newcomb, who identified himself as the Exalted Cyclops of the Klan chapter, told Moran and the informant that they could shoot the former inmate if the plan went awry, according to the transcript. If we have to do pow-pow, we will, the affidavit quotes him as saying.

In early 2015, the FBI informant told the men he could contact a professional to kill the former inmate for them. Sounds good, Driver told him, according to the affidavit. At that point, FBI agents notified the intended victim about the looming attempt on his life and put him in protective custody.

Prosecutors said the FBI nabbedNewcomb, Moran and Driver by staging a homicide scene that made it look like the former inmate had been savagely murdered.

When the FBI informant showed the men a cellphone photo of the scene, they smiled, the affidavit says, and Driver shook the informants hand in gratitude.

Crosses burn at a KKK night ceremony held on Table Top Mountain in Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. A row of men in white hoods that cover the face and robes encircles men in street clothes who kneel with their backs to the camera. Spectators sit in chairs outside the circle, some have on white hoods. Shows a flagpole and the American flag. C. 1924-1925

Denver Public Library

Photomontage of Ku Klux Klan women members, who include Mrs. Gano Senter, as they prepare to distribute baskets of food for Thanksgiving in Denver, Colorado. One portion of the montage shows a baby, Master Richard, dressed in a robe and hood.

Denver Post/Denver Public Library

Studio portraits of Laurena Senter, the Imperial Commander of the Colorado Women’s Order of the Ku Klux Klan. She wears light colored silk robes, a pointed hat, and cape decorated with crosses. She poses seated, standing, and standing with arm raised. 1925

Senter collection/Denver Public Library

Members of the Ku Klux Klan kneel and stand around a U. S. flag in a ceremony on Golden Road near Denver, Colorado. A cross illuminated by flashlights is nearby. The men wear hoods and robes. April 16, 1922

Denver Post/Denver Public Library

Governor Clarence J. Morely takes a cowboy hat from an unknown man dressed as a cowboy, possibly an actor, on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol building in Denver, Colorado. Morely served as Governor of Colorado from 1925 to 1927, and was known as the Ku Klux Klan Governor during the political peak of the Klan in the 1920’s. Shows four men in cowboy outfits and suits.

Morey Engle/Denver Public Library

View of a burning cross on Ruby Hill, in Denver, Colorado; a man in Ku Klux Klan uniform and hood is to the side. 1920s

Morey Engle/Denver Public Library

Klansmen exchange documents with one another in front of a burning cross and an American flag as other members of the group watch at a rally of the Boulder Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Boulder County, Colorado. 1925.

Denver Public Library

Panoramic night view of men, members of the KKK, in pointed hoods that cover the face and dark or white robes who stand, or sit on horseback, on Table Top Mountain near Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. Men in bandanna masks and street clothes kneel before a table with three hooded men; one holds an American flag. Many of the men salute. 1924-25

Senter collection/Denver Public Library

Members of the KKK, in pointed hoods that cover the face and dark or white robes, stand around a tall cross in a boulder field on the summit of Pikes Peak in El Paso County, Colorado. They raise their arms in salute. Shows an American flag and the tops of automobiles. July 4, 1923

Senter collection/Denver Public Library

Group portrait of men (with drums) and women in Ku Klux Klan costume and Revolutionary era uniforms, in Denver, Colorado. 1925

Denver Post/Denver Public Library

Governor Clarence J. Morely poses in the Governor’s office. Morely served as Governor of Colorado from 1925 to 1927, and was known as the Ku Klux Klan Governor during the political peak of the Klan in the 1920’s. SHows a desk chair, and house plants and cut flowers.

Morey Engle/Denver Public Library

Ku Klux Klan members and burning crosses encircle a crowd of people at “Kastle Mountain” near Denver, Colorado. Spectators sit in folding chairs. 1925

Edgar I. Fuller/Denver Public Library

Photomontage of Ku Klux Klan women members, who include Mrs. Gano Senter, as they prepare to distribute baskets of food for Thanksgiving in Denver, Colorado. One portion of the montage shows a baby, Master Richard, dressed in a robe and hood.

Denver Post/Denver Public Library

A cross burns at a night meeting of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) on Table Top Mountain near Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. Men in white robes and hoods encircle a group of men in street clothes who kneel in front of the burning cross. A container and cups on a tray sit behind rows of chairs. 1924-25

Senter collection/Denver Public Library

Photomontage of the image of a man, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, in a white hood and robe, mounted on a horse draped with a white robe, superimposed upon an image of Castle Rock on South Table Mountain near Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. 1923-24

Senter collection/Denver Public Library

Ku Klux Klan members inspect the Miller Special race car owned by Ralph de Palma at Overland Park race track in Denver, Colorado. People crowd the bleachers. The driver, identified as Mr. Miller, wears a duster and holds a cap. (July 1925)

Morey Engle/Denver Public Library

Portrait of a members of the Ku Klux Klan probably in Colorado. They wear water-proof robes and hoods.

Denver Public Library

Members of the Ku Klux Klan march in a parade on Larimer Street in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes as spectators look on. Parked automobiles line the street. A sign on a building reads: “Western Clothing Co.” May 31, 1926

Denver Post/Denver Public Library

Ku Klux Klan members light candles in metal cans buried in a dirt mound probably in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes. May 7, 1940

Denver Public Library

View of a cross burned in Clarence F. Holmes’ yard by the KKK near his office at 2602 Welton Street in the Five Points neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. A sign on a nearby building reads: “Industrial Real[ty] Co. […]” 1925

Clarence F. Holmes/Denver Public Library

Studio portrait of women members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The women pose in white hoods and robes with cross emblems. One woman wears a dark cape. 1922-25?

Denver Public Library

Ku Klux Klan members march by office buildings on Larimer Street in Denver, Colorado. May 31, 1926

Edgar I. Fuller/Denver Public Library

Two women and a man, members of the Ku Klux Klan, stand near a burning cross at night probably in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes.

Denver News/Denver Public Library

Ku Klux Klan members light candles in metal cans buried in a dirt mound probably in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes. May 7, 1940

We are taking a look back at the history of the Klan in Coloradoone of several western states that saw among the largest population of members in the early1920s.

THE Ku Klux Klan returned to prominence thanks toDonald Trump who is cited as a factor in the rise ofright-wing groups in America after they backed him to become president.

Theyre popping their robes back on, emboldened to broadcast their white supremacist message like never before. We explain everything you need to know about them.

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In a nutshell, the Ku Klux Klan (or the KKK) is an extremist hate group who believeall non-Caucasian people are inferior to them.

The group believes that America should be a nation that is free from drugs, homosexuality and immigration.

Claiming to have extreme pride in their nation, they say that they are building a better society for everyone arguing on their website that they are a group not of hate but of love.

Historically, black Americans have been the KKKs main target but more recently it has targeted Jews, immigrants, LGBT people and even Catholics.

The groups history since its formation in 1865 can be divided into three eras.

The first Klan, founded in Tennessee, was formed by former members of the Confederate army in around 1865. As a movement it was relatively short-lived at the outset but, as secret vigilantes, the Klan carried out acts of terrorism such as the lynchings, arson, murders, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks historically associated with the group. During the first era, these attacks were directed towards anyone who challenged white supremacy.

The second Klan, founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1921, presented itself as a fraternal organisation employing full-time recruiters. At its peak, it was present in every state in America claiming to have at least 4 million members, operations in Canada, and even reportedly some recruiting activity in the UK.

However, the KKKs popularity plummeted to only 30,000 members after a series of scandals.

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The third revival came in the 1960s in opposition to the civil rights movement, which in the Klans eyes threatened segregation.

The KKK name was used by a number of independent groups many members of which were convicted of murders of civil rights workers.

One of the KKKs most violent actions was the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 an attack which killed four young girls.

Today, it is thought there are at least 5,000 members of various KKK chapters in the United States.

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The KKK refers to its beliefs and practices as Klankraft. Although they are a secretive group, there is some knowledge of its beliefs and practices which are all, of course, based on their white supremacist views.

Incredible imagesgive a chilling insight into white supremacist culture that still exist in all corners of America.

One of the most iconic symbols of the KKK is their white robes, which feature a conical mask. These were adopted by the first Klan, and were intended to add to the terror of their brutal attacks.

As part of their rituals, the KKK carries out cross burnings. Most Christians would say burning a cross is sacrilege but the Klan believe it is lighting it, in a symbol of members faith.

The KKK also use unique titles and greetings among their members with the leaders referred to as Grand or Imperial Wizards.

To this day the KKK attend rallies, and due the United States Constitutions First Amendment, which relates to freedom of speech, their hate speech is legal.

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Frank Ancona, a self-described Imperial Wizard of the Missouri chapter of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was found dead with a gunshot to the head in February 2017.

Ancona, who wrote that the KKKs mission was to preserve white culture and heritage as well as to preserve the traditions passed down to our Klan from its founding in 1865,had been reported missing from his home afterhe told his wife Malissa that he was filing for a divorce.

After being reported missing on February 10, his body was found near the Big River, with the Sheriff describing his death as a tragic and senseless act of violence.

The 51-year-olds wife, Malissa, and her son Paul Edward Jinkerson Jr, 24, have both been charged with his murder.

Authorities believe that Malissa broke into Franks safe to get at his guns so that she could kill him.

Washington County coroner Brian DeClue told The Kansas City Star:It was not self-inflicted.This is now a homicide investigation.

Donald Trumpblasted the KKK and neo-Nazis as repugnant after being criticised for not singling out the far-right violence following the horrific car assault inCharlottesville, Virginia.

Far-right groups had gathered on August 12 to protest the decision to bring down the statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee.

Heather Hyer, 32, died after being hit by the car, with her family saying she had been marching in a cry for social justice.

During his statement at the White House, the Trump denounced racism as evil and singled out the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as repugnant.

He said: Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

He added: We are made by the same all mighty God. We must unite together to condemn racist, bigotry and violence.

Trump attracted criticism for not being strong enough following the terrifying car assault.

The President said: We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. Its been going on for a long time in our country.

Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time.

He added: Above all else, we must remember this truth no matter our colour, creed, religion or political party, we are all Americans first.

David Duke was the Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a chapter of the KKK, from 1974 to 1980. Before 1975, he was a member of the American Nazi party and is now a Republican.

The Oklahoma native was Republican Louisiana State Representative from 1989 to 1992, and even a candidate in the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1988.

But in November 2016, he failed to win a seat in the Senate in Louisiana.

AP:Associated Press

The 56-year-old, who is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier, is against what he believes to be the Jewish control of the Federal Reserve Bank, US federal government and the media. He also believes in racial segregation.

Following Donald Trumps election, David Dukethanked Wikileaks and Julian Assange describing the Wikileaks founder as a hero.

By Terence McArdle By Terence McArdle August 17 at 6:00 AM At the height of its popularity, the Ku Klux Klan brought more than 30,000 of its members to participate in a parade in downtown D.C. on Aug. 8, 1925. (British Path) The Ku Klux Klan was at the height of its popularity when more than 30,000 members racists and anti-Semites marching 22 abreast and 14 rows deep paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on Aug. 8, 1925. White-robed Klan cheered on march in nations capital, read the front-page headline in The Washington Post the next day. The gathering dwarfed the hundreds of white nationalists, Klan members and neo-Nazis who descended on Charlottesville Saturday to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. The rally turned into a riot as the white supremacists clashed with counterprotests, leaving 32-year-old Heather Heyer dead and many others injured. Nearly a century ago, the Klan was welcomed to segregated Washington by its white residents, as the breathless coverage in The Post demonstrated. Phantom-like hosts of the Ku Klux Klan spread their white robe over the most historic thoroughfare yesterday in one of the greatest demonstrations this city has ever known, read The Posts account. [The Ku Klux Klan was dead. The first Hollywood blockbuster revived it.] Led by L.A. Mueller, the grand Kleagle of Washington, the Ku Klux Klan booked 18 trains for their march and rally. Hotels filled with the hooded men. Lunch stands and tobacco shops quickly sold out. The Klan even brought their own ambulances to escort those felled by the August heat. The Post story rhapsodizes about their parade pageantry but says very little about the groups espousal of hatred. However, it does criticize their parade skills: There were few drilled marchers in the parade. At times their lines, extending the full length of the Avenue, swayed hopelessly back and forth. The Klansmen marched for over three hours before arriving at the Washington Monument grounds for speeches, only to be greeted by a torrential downpour. Dont leave, Mueller exhorted. God wont let it rain. But the rains came, washing out the demonstration, and many left. The next day a Klan contingent crossed over the river to Arlington. They placed wreaths on the Tomb of the Unknowns and the grave of William Jennings Bryan. That evening 75,000 people witnessed many watching from roadsides and their back yards the burning of an electrically lit 80-foot cross at the Arlington Park horse grounds. The ceremony initiated some 200 new members into the hooded order. The Klan returned to Washington to parade again on Sept. 13, 1926. However, this time only 15,000 less than half the previous years crowd marched. To understand the prevalence of the Klan in the 1920s, try to imagine what the tea party on steroids would look like, said historian Ibram X. Kendi, author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. That was the scope and power that the KKK had in the 1920s. [Leo Frank was lynched for a murder he didnt commit. Now neo-Nazis are trying to rewrite history.] Many of the hooded marchers showed their faces a rather telling indication that the group, responsible for lynchings and other acts of terror, could operate with impunity. At the time, the Klan boasteda national dues-paying membership of nearly 5 million men and 500,000 women. The shedding of the masks was a subject of internal debate for the group, a move that some felt would grant their organization added legitimacy and respectability. You had many members of the KKK who were politicians senators, congressmen, statehouse representatives, said Kendi, and that only encouraged the members to appear publicly without their hoods. Indeed, the 1924 Democratic convention was known as the Klanbake, because the party by a razor-thin margin voted against an anti-Klan plank in its platform. If you were a member of the Democratic Party, a powerful member, you probably had some sort of affiliation to the KKK either publicly or privately, said Kendi. Though there were also members of the Klan in the Republican Party, they had most of their power in the Democratic Party. The original Ku Klux Klan had fallen by the wayside after reconstruction, only to see its fortunes revived with director D.W. Griffiths 1915 movie The Birth of A Nation. President Woodrow Wilson screened the film twice for guests at the White House. The revived Klan drew its members not only from the South but from the Midwest and industrial North and saw itself as the protector of white Protestant supremacy. In addition to African Americans, they hatedCatholic and Jewish immigrants and feared the Northern migration of African Americans. They also saw themselves as great moralists. In additional to their campaign of terror against African Americans and ethnic minorities, the Klan broke up stills in the name of prohibition and flayed and flogged adulterers in the name of traditional family values. Kendi sees parallels between the Klan of the 1920s and the alt-right that inspired the recent violence in Charlottesville. When you have a set of circumstances occurring, like those over the last 40 years stagnating wages, immigration occurring, economic inequality growing it allows demagogues to say this is occurring because of diversity, because of civil rights for people of color. These white supremacists are conditioned to believe this even though it flies in the face of facts. Read more Retropolis: Death of a devil: The white supremacist got hit by a car. His victims celebrated. Google memorializes the Silent Parade when 10,000 black people protested lynchings When Portland banned blacks: Oregons shameful history as an all-white state Life or death for black travelers: How fear led to The Negro Motorist Green-Book

A Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain Park, Georgia, features Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee. Photograph: Alamy Georgias Stone Mountain park has denied the Ku Klux Klans request to burn a cross at the top of the mountain, where the second KKK was founded in 1915. Joey Hobbs, of the Sacred Knights Ku Klux Klan, submitted a permit application request for 20 people to attend a cross-burning on top of the mountain, which is notorious for being tied to the KKK. We will light our cross and 20 minutes later we will be gone, Hobbs wrote on the permit. The Stone Mountain Memorial Association this week denied the request for a 21 October cross-burning and said in a statement that it condemns the beliefs and actions of the Ku Klux Klan and believes the denial of this Public Assembly request is in the best interest of all parties. We dont want any of these groups at the park, quite frankly, John Bankhead, a spokesman for the association, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He said the burning would have been an act of intimidation, in keeping with the KKKs history of burning crosses to intimidate black Americans, and that the park would not allow that. The park, site of the second founding of the KKK, has a giant carved Confederate memorial of Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee, which was completed in the 1960s, decades after initial work was halted. There has been a spate of white supremacist rallies at the park in recent years, though they are often attended by more protesters than supporters. The park clamped down on event safety after an April 2016 white supremacist gathering swelled with hundreds of protesters opposed to the rally, which was ultimately attended by just a few dozen white supremacists. The association cited the April 2016 rally and said the cross-burning would require more safety resources than could be provided.

Hate groups, historians remind us, have always been with us. The recent deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va., might have been the largest and most brazen of such American gatherings in a decade or so. However, one of the constituent groups, the Ku Klux Klan, has emblazoned a long historical scar on Texas. At one point during the 1920s, the group was politically and socially pervasive nationwide, almost a daily fact of life. Its Austin chapter had swelled to 1,500 members by 1922. It took a determined effort by crusaders such as future Texas Gov. Dan Moody to quell the tide.

Origins of the First Klan (ca. 18661874) Ku Klux Klan The first Klan was born after the American Civil War (18611865) in the law office of Judge Thomas M. Jones in Pulaski, Tennessee, sometime between December 1865 and June 1866. It was founded by six Confederate veterans: James Crowe, Richard Reed, Calvin Jones (Thomas Jones’s son), John Lester, Frank McCord, and John Kennedy. The Pulaski Six, as they came to be known, allegedly formed the organization for amusement and to break the boredom of their small town. However, as Reconstruction policies took effect between 1865 and 1877, allowing African Americans to become more active in southern political, economic, and social life, local cells of the Klan, called klaverns, formed throughout the south and took on a different role. According to historian Eric Foner, the Klan went from being an amusement activity to “a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy.” Although the first Klan was less centralized than the second, explains Foner, it effectively aimed “to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.” To achieve these ends, Klansmen donned white-sheeted regalia that covered their bodies and masked their faces as they employed unseemly methods of intimidation, including rape, beating, murder, and lynching. Members of the so-called Invisible Empire relied upon secrecy and anonymity to avoid being caught and to create an environment of fear in which blacks and pro-Reconstruction whites had to live under a constant threat of violence. In Virginia the first Klan’s life was brief. According to historian Allen W. Trelease, the Klan appeared in the Old Dominion in March 1868 andwith a few exceptionsdisappeared by the end of April, just a month later. Its presence was not, however, without incident. Margaret Newbold Thorpe, a teacher at a freedmen’s school outside of Williamsburg during this period, observed: The Ku Klux have been in our neighborhood, and we have received notice that they intend giving us a call [sic] Their outrages and murders have become matters of history; one of the missionaries in this part of Va.a New England man, a cripple, was dragged from his bed and over the ground to the woods and terribly beaten. The poor wife never left him, and took him back nearly dead. Klan-related violence also occurred in the town of Warrenton and Lee and Rockingham counties. Virginia newspapers, in particular the Richmond Daily Enquirer & Examiner, helped to spread interest in the hooded order. In an editorial from March 26, 1868, the Daily Enquirer & Examiner lauds the Klan’s objectives and describes it as an organization which is thoroughly loyal to the Federal constitution, but which will not permit the people of the South to become the victims of negro rule. It is purely defensive, and for the protection of the white race, and has been rendered necessary by the organization of thousands of secret negro leagues, whose members have been stimulated to carry out the work of disfranchisement of the whites by the promise of pillage and wholesale confiscation. News of this nature helped the Klan garner support throughout the state. While estimates of statewide Klan membership are unknown, the Daily Richmond Whig claimed that Richmond alone counted 4,000 members. However, after reports of Klan violence in Virginia, newspaperseven the Daily Enquirer & Examinerchanged their tone and, according to Trelease, ridiculed the Klan as an organization that “no one in his right mind took seriously.” With public support weakened, perhaps more so because the state was never truly under Republican control, the Klan’s foothold in Virginia slipped. Congressman Benjamin Butler The larger Klan collapsed in the early 1870s, in part because between 1870 and 1874 the U.S. Congress passed a series of laws limiting the organization’s activity. The first Enforcement Act, passed on May 31, 1870, enforced the implementation of the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave African Americans the right to vote. Provoked by that act, Klan violence only intensified during the elections of 1870. In response, Congressman and former Union general Benjamin Butler drafted what came to be known as the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The act made it illegal for two or more people to conspire with the intent to disfranchise someone else and gave the president the power to use military force and to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to quell any civil disturbance that threatened a person’s or persons’ constitutional rights. On October 17, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus in nine South Carolina counties in the northern part of the state, where the Klan was particularly violent. He was the first president to do so during peacetime. Most of the Klan disbanded when its members fled the state or were imprisoned. The destruction of the Klan in South Carolina reverberated throughout other states and caused the movement’s ultimate collapse, allowing Republicans to turn their attention away from the South and to other issues. In 1874, the Democratic Party took control of the House of Representatives. Three years later, after Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was placed in the White House with the understanding that all federal troops would be removed from the former Confederate states, the death knell rang for Radical Reconstruction. With the federal government’s face averted from issues of civil rights, Southern state governments were free to begin disfranchising African Americans through the passage of state and local segregation legislation, called Jim Crow laws, and to enforce such a process with outright violence and lynching. While the first Klan was a distinctly southern white movement, the second and most popular Klanthe Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Incorporatedwas national in scope. Along with its traditional racial values and espousal of white supremacy, this national Klan defended what it termed “one-hundred-percent Americanism” and in this effort set its sights on what it deemed to be “un-American”: Jews, Catholics, organized labor, immigrants, the alcohol industry, and prostitution. Of the three distinct Klans, this was the most active and powerful, with a membership that peaked at several million in the mid-1920s. The Birth of a Nation The second Klan gained much from the mythologized legacy of the first. This mythology portrayed Klan members as chivalric defenders of civilization and gentility, and had been percolating in white America’s imagination during the years following the first Klan’s demise, thanks in part to popular fiction. Before 1915, no work was as powerful in spreading the myth of the Klan as that of novelist Thomas Dixon Jr., a sometime resident of Northampton County. Dixon dramatized white supremacy and the heroism of the first Klan in several bestselling novels including The Leopard’s Spots (1902) and The Clansman (1905), the latter of which Dixon adapted as a play. His romanticized view of the Klan sold so well that his novels, particularly The Clansman, helped to establish Doubleday, Page & Company as a major publishing house. But the apotheosis of Dixon’s work came in 1915 with the opening of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation. A film adaptation of The Clansman and The Leopard’s Spots, Birth of a Nation became one of the most powerful pieces of pro-Klan propaganda. After a private screening of the film, President Woodrow Wilson allegedly claimed that it was like “writing history with lightning, and my only regret is that it is all so true.” Whether Wilson said this or not, the quote was used to endorse and market the film and the Klan. In the autumn of 1915, William Joseph Simmons decided to use the premiere of Birth of a Nation to inaugurate the second Klan with a cross-burning ceremony atop Stone Mountain, in Georgia. Simmons, an Alabaman who earlier in his career had tried his hand at ministry but was denied a pulpit because of “moral impairment,” was a paid organizer and member of several fraternal orders, including the Woodmen of the World. Claiming to have had a longstanding plan of resurrecting the Klan, Simmons borrowed from his work experience to incorporate the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as a centrally managed fraternal organization that would stand for “comprehensive Americanism.” When Birth of a Nation opened in Atlanta, Georgia, in December 1915, local newspapers carried advertisements announcing Simmons’s Klan. With the United States’ entry into World War I in 1917 came powerful nativistic and anti-immigration sentiments in which the Klan found a purpose: the nation, explains historian David M. Chalmers, “had to be defended against alien enemies, slackers, idlers, strike leaders, and immoral women, lest victory be endangered.” While the KKK garnered only several thousand members during the war, white America’s fearful, angry mood continued after the Armistice in November 1918, cultivating an environment that was ripe for spreading the Klan’s message. Simmons signed a contract in June 1920 with the Southern Publicity Association to market his organization. To its current list of anti-American elements the Klan added “dope, bootlegging, graft, night clubs and road houses, violation of the Sabbath, unfair business dealings, sex, marital ‘goings-on,’ and scandalous behavior.” But as its membership grew, allegedly to as many as five million individuals, so did the Klan’s reputation for using violence to achieve its goals. Ku Klux Klan Official In the fall of 1920, Klan salesmen, called Kleagles, fanned out across southern states, including Virginia, to recruit members. During this time John Mitchell Jr.’s Richmond Planet and P. B. Young Sr.’s Norfolk Journal and Guide reported on and condemned the Klan, like much of the black press in other states, and white journalists Douglas Southall Freeman, of the Richmond News Leader , and Louis I. Jaff, of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, agreed that the Klan’s vigilante reputation merited condemnation. When the Klan started recruiting from Virginia’s smaller cities and towns in 1921, however, that reputation became a selling point. That summer, placards warning “Gamblers, Bootleggers, High-Speeders, Thieves, Crooks, Houses of Ill Fame and Proprietors” to leave town announced the arrival of Klan recruiters in Farmville and other localities. Reports of lynchings in Texas and other states confirmed the Klan’s vigilante appeal. In September 1921, the New York World initiated a series, syndicated in papers nationwide, that exposed both the Klan’s violence and its shoddy leadership. The U.S. Congress followed with its own investigation. Sales of memberships plummeted and Kleagles, dependent on commissions, revolted. The Klan passed through several months of turmoil before resurfacing in the summer of 1922 with anti-Catholicism as its dominant theme and with growth in the Midwest outstripping that in the South. John Powell Events in Richmond during this period determined the fate of the Klan in Virginia. From its founding, Richmond Klan No. 1 had an anti-Catholic faction, and when respectable local officers followed the New York World’s revelations of the Klan’s disreputable leadership by suspending payments to Klan headquarters in Atlanta, the local unit split, with the anti-Catholics remaining loyal. The officers’ faction soon reconstituted itself as Anglo-Saxon Club No. 1 and under the leadership of Earnest Sevier Cox and John Powell backed agitation for a Racial Integrity Law that would protect whiteness against the threats that immigration and miscegenation purportedly posed. Klan loyalists took the Anglo-Saxon Club to court to regain their records, hoods, and robes. In response, members of the Club charged that the Klan, a Georgia corporation, had failed to register with the State Corporation Commission and was thus operating illegally in Virginia. The Klan was fined fifty dollars and nearly two years passed without official Klan organizing in Virginia. “Pay-Your-Poll-Tax!!!” By summer 1924, when newspapers reported renewed Klan activities in Virginia, national Klan leadership was on shaky ground. Hiram Wesley Evans had overthrown Simmons and assumed the role of Imperial Wizard. Evans was soon at loggerheads with David Clarke Stephenson, the powerful Grand Dragon of Indiana, where the Klan’s growth and power were unrivaled. Despite infighting on the national stage, by 1925 nearly sixty local Klan units had formed in Virginia from the Eastern Shore to the Appalachians, with all the state’s cities represented. According to Chalmers, the “centers of Klan strength in the Old Dominion lay in a series of growing, industrializing cities, most notably Norfolk, Newport News, Portsmouth, Lynchburg, Danville, Hopewell, and Roanoke.” It was through these cities that such commodities as coal, seafood, lumber, tobacco, and manufactured goods were shipped and marketed, and in these cities’ factories that blacks and whites competed for the jobs to package, mill, and refine these goods. Klan membership in these areas became, in Chalmers’s words, “second only to church.” In an effort to advance its members’ socioeconomic and ethnic views, the Klan turned to politics. In 1925, in addition to supporting a bill that would forbid the teaching of evolution in Virginia schools, the Virginia Klan campaigned against John M. Purcell, the incumbent Democratic state treasurer and a Roman Catholic. Klan members threw their support behind Purcell’s Republican opponent, John David Bassett, whom they styled “the 100% candidate.” Bassett lost the election, but performed surprisingly well in a state controlled by a very strong Democratic machine. The Klan tried to deny Purcell’s reelection bid in 1928 and also opposed Governor Harry F. Byrd’s efforts to make several statewide offices, including Purcell’s, appointive rather than elective. Ku Klux Klan in Washington, D.C. The Virginia Klan received its charter as a Klan realm in 1925, and Joel L. Baskin, a native of Mississippi, moved to Richmond to lead the realm as Grand Dragon. With Baskin at the helm, Klan activities in Virginia increased. In August 1925, unmasked Klansmen and Klanswomen from Lynchburg marched in Washington, D.C., alongside more than 30,000 other Klan members from across the country. In September 1926, 5,000 Klansmen and the Imperial Wizard himself presented a flagpole to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. College president Julian Alvin Carroll Chandler accepted the gift, but used the occasion to deliver a pointed lecture on the virtues of religious liberty and the evils of mob violence. In fact, it was the increase in Klan-related violence more than anything else that lessened the Klan’s popularity in the Commonwealth. Incidents of violence directly and indirectly associated with the Klan after 1925 included kidnappings, floggings, and at least one lynching. In August 1926, a group of fifty masked Klan members forcibly removed Raymond Bird, a black man charged with an offense against two white women, from the Wythe County jail. Encountering little resistance from local authorities, the mob shot Bird, beat him, tortured him, and then lynched him. Appalled, the Richmond Times-Dispatch called upon the citizens of Wytheville to “press for a special grand jury to investigate this attack on law and order.” Only one member of the mob, Floyd Willard, was actually charged and tried for his participation in the lynching. Newspaper Editor Louis Isaac Jaff A few weeks later, on September 1, 1926, six hooded men kidnapped and interrogated Father Vincent Warren, a Catholic priest who taught black children in Princess Anne County. There was an outcry of support for the priest as the public pressured the Byrd administration to bring Warren’s assailants to justice. But despite support from Louis Jaff, who criticized the inactivity of local authorities in his editorials in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, nothing substantive was done beyond the passage of a local anti-mask ordinance. Jaff resolved to pressure Governor Byrd to put forward a state anti-lynching law. Byrd and other white elites in Virginia were invested in maintaining white supremacy, but they were not fans of the Klan’s secretive nature and mob mentality or the violence that ensued from it. According to historian J. Douglas Smith, the Klan “threatened paternalistic notions of noblesse oblige that formed the foundation of Virginia’s claim to friendly race relations. In short, elites considered the Klan crass and embarrassing.” Caught between Jaff’s fiery editorials and his own desire to preserve white supremacy, Byrd moved with caution and much hesitation. While Byrd ultimately did write what became the Virginia Anti-Lynching Law of 1928one of the most stringent in the nationSmith writes that he did so “only after others had convinced him that such a measure would enhance the state’s reputation.” Whatever the motivation, the Klan’s days as a powerful organization in the Commonwealth were numbered. Ballston KKK Band No. 6 Realm of Virginia In 1930, the Washington Post reported a sharp decline in national Klan membership: in Virginia, membership amounted to only 1,593. Responding to this report, Klansmen from Ballston, Potomac, Alexandria, Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, Fairfax, Occoquan, and from Maryland and the District rallied at Alexandria, but only 188 robed members appeared, including the 26-piece Ballston Klan Band. Several Klans continued to meet in Virginia, with Roanoke’s Robert E. Lee Klan No. 4 probably the largest and most active of them. Joel Baskin kept the Klan alive in Virginia through the Great Depression, shifting the organization’s focus from anti-Catholicism to anti-Communism. In April 1944, the U.S. Treasury Department sued the national Klan for unpaid back taxes; the Klan settled the case by disbanding. On May 24, 1944, the American Shore Patrol applied for a charter in Virginia. Investigation showed that its head was Joel L. Baskin and, despite its claim to be concerned only with immigration to the United States, it was a cover for his old Klan realm. The American Shore Patrol faded away before Baskin died in 1948. The Klan was revived in the 1950s and 1960s to fight against the desegregation of public spaces and to block African Americans’ increased efforts to gain full civil rights. Between 1949 and 1952, a number of cross-burnings occurred in Nansemond and Suffolk counties. In the winter of 1952, Bill Hendrix, Grand Dragon of the Florida KKK, confirmed plans to reorganize the Klan in Virginia. The initiative met resistance in March 1953 when the General Assembly passed a bill, recommended by Governor John S. Battle, that prohibited wearing masks and burning crosses in public. Although there were occasional Klan-related incidentsincluding an August 1955 cross-burning on the front lawn of the home of Oliver Hill, who worked to desegregate public schoolsKlan activity did not again become evident in Virginia until the mid-1960s. Poster for Klan Rally In the spring of 1965, the United Klans of America sent Marshall Kornegay, of North Carolina, to organize in Virginia. The state had only an estimated 2,000 active Klan members in 1966 and much less Klan activity than in states to the south, but enough for the Richmond and Norfolk offices of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to keep a close watch. In the fall of 1966, unidentified individuals bombed an African American church in Richmond. Because the incident “smacked of ‘Klan-like’ activity,” civil rights groups such as the Virginia chapter of the NAACP pressured Governor Mills E. Godwin to officially condemn the Klan. In December he finally did, singling out cross-burning as a “reprehensible” act “long associated with the record of bigotry compiled by the Ku Klux Klan” that “must be stamped out.” In the weeks that followed, the Klan tested Godwin’s mettle by holding rallies. But the weight of the political establishment was against them. With desegregation imminent and Virginia’s political leadership committed to finding and rooting out the Klan rather than ignoring it, Virginia became inhospitable ground for the Klan to flourish. While the Klan still exists in the twenty-first century, it lacks the cohesion and numbers it once had. In 2007 the Anti-Defamation League reported a resurgence of Klan activity. In 2012, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremism in the United States, identified active klaverns in Abingdon, Powhatan, Martinsville, and Dungannon.

Inside Higher Ed In The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition, Linda Gordon … Inside Higher Ed Scholarship on the Ku Klux Klan long ago reached the stage of high granularity, with monographs focusing on the state and local level (there is a book-length study of the Klan in Utah, for example, and one focusing on El Paso, Tex.) even to the point … Chilling images resurface from 1920s showing hooded Ku Klux Klan members including CHILDREN marching through … Daily Mail 'I'm glad that girl died' during Virginia protest, says NC KKK leader Charlotte Observer KKK leader 'glad' woman died in Charlottesville attack: report New York Post HuffPost – WBTV all 36 news articles »

Fliers apparently distributed by the Ku Klux Klan have been circulating in the oceanfront community of Boothbay Harbor, according to a report by WCSH-TV. The flier obtained by the Portland television station has Transgender stamped at the top in bold letters with a headline below it that reads, Is an Abomination according to the King James Bible. It goes on to quote Dueteronomy 22:5 and adds a warning: Act now, before its too late. They are jeopardizing the safety of bathrooms across the nation for our women and children. This needs to stop. The flier then urges readers to join the KKK. It says the nation has no future unless the KKK unites and organizes white Christian patriots. The Traditonalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan takes credit for the flier, and have added their website address to the bottom of the flier. Rev. Sarah Foulger, a local Boothbay Harbor pastor, told WCSH-TV that fliers have been found on Middle Road, Lakeside Drive and along Route 27. Foulger said the fliers were placed inside plastic bags with rocks and appear to have been thrown onto lawns. In January, Freeport and Augusta residents were stunned when they woke up to discover Ku Klux Klan fliers outside their homes. Those fliers, carefully folded and tucked inside plastic sandwich bags weighted with pebbles, were tossed at the end of driveways and near mailboxes of about two dozen homes on South Freeport Road. Those fliers urged people to call an 800 number that is the 24 Hour Klanline. You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake! the flier states. Are there troubles in your neighborhood? Contact the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan today!

Two former prison guards in Florida, who were members of the Ku Klux Klan, have been convicted of plotting to killa black inmate in retaliation for a scuffle with another guard whoalso belonged to the hate group. A jury in Columbia County, Fla., found David Elliot Moran and Charles Thomas Newcomb guilty of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder afterthey were caught discussing their plans with an FBI informant, the state attorney general announcedTuesday. At the time of their arrest in 2015, Moran was an officer at the Florida Department of Corrections Reception and Medical Centerin Lake Butler. Newcomb had worked there previously. The third guard, Thomas Jordan Driver, also worked at the facility, which processes new male inmates into the prison system and provides medical care for prisoners throughout the state. He pleaded guilty in March to one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder and was sentenced to four years in prison. All three men were members of a well-known Klan affiliate called the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,prosecutors said. These Klansmen plotted to murder a black inmate after he was released from prison, but swift action and clever investigative tactics on behalf of investigators foiled their plot and may have saved a life, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Tuesday. We will continue to work daily to ensure the KKK or any other hate-filled organization is unable to inflict violence on the citizens of our great state. Attorneys for the defendants didnt immediately respond to messages seeking comment.Newcomb and Moran pleaded not guiltyto the charges in May 2015, according to News4Jax. A sentencing date has not been scheduled. The defendants face up to 30 years in prison. The convictions cameasPresident Trump on Tuesdaydefended his responseto the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville over the weekendthat left a counterprotester dead and dozens of other people injured. Trump is facing widespread criticism that he waited too long to condemn the hate groups involved and inflamed racial tensions by claimingthat both sides were to blame for the violence. Prosecutors said the Florida prison guards plot to kill the black inmate was hatched at a Ku Klux Klanmeeting in the Jacksonville area in late 2014. Newcomb, Moran and Driver told an FBI informant who had infiltrated the groupthat Driver had gotten into a physical altercation with the inmate, according to a partially redacted affidavit released to reporters at the time of their arrests. Driversaid the inmate had bitten him during the struggle, and he was worried about contracting a disease. The three men told the informant they wanted to see the inmate six feet underonce he was released, according to the affidavit. After the inmate was released,Newcomb and Morandivulged the details of the murder plot in a conversation with the informant that was secretly recorded. The affidavit contains a partial transcript of the meeting, where they discuss abducting the man and injecting him with insulin to make his death look accidental: Newcomb: I set that fishing pole like hes been fishing, and give him a couple shots, and we sit there and wait on him, we can kind of lay him like he just kind of tippled over into the water. And he can breathe in just a little bit of that water. Moran:What do you what do you mean, you talk about taking him fishing or watching him? Newcomb:Im talking about jerking his a up, putting him in the car and taking him down there. Moran: Yeah, but does he fish? Newcomb: It dont matter. Newcomb, who identified himself as the Exalted Cyclops of the Klan chapter, told Moran and the informant that they could shoot the former inmate if the plan went awry, according to the transcript. If we have to do pow-pow, we will, the affidavit quotes him as saying. In early 2015, the FBI informant told the men he could contact a professional to kill the former inmate for them. Sounds good, Driver told him, according to the affidavit. At that point, FBI agents notified the intended victim about the looming attempt on his life and put him in protective custody. Prosecutors said the FBI nabbedNewcomb, Moran and Driver by staging a homicide scene that made it look like the former inmate had been savagely murdered. When the FBI informant showed the men a cellphone photo of the scene, they smiled, the affidavit says, and Driver shook the informants hand in gratitude. Abby Ohlheiser contributed to this report.

Crosses burn at a KKK night ceremony held on Table Top Mountain in Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. A row of men in white hoods that cover the face and robes encircles men in street clothes who kneel with their backs to the camera. Spectators sit in chairs outside the circle, some have on white hoods. Shows a flagpole and the American flag. C. 1924-1925 Denver Public Library Photomontage of Ku Klux Klan women members, who include Mrs. Gano Senter, as they prepare to distribute baskets of food for Thanksgiving in Denver, Colorado. One portion of the montage shows a baby, Master Richard, dressed in a robe and hood. Denver Post/Denver Public Library Studio portraits of Laurena Senter, the Imperial Commander of the Colorado Women’s Order of the Ku Klux Klan. She wears light colored silk robes, a pointed hat, and cape decorated with crosses. She poses seated, standing, and standing with arm raised. 1925 Senter collection/Denver Public Library Members of the Ku Klux Klan kneel and stand around a U. S. flag in a ceremony on Golden Road near Denver, Colorado. A cross illuminated by flashlights is nearby. The men wear hoods and robes. April 16, 1922 Denver Post/Denver Public Library Governor Clarence J. Morely takes a cowboy hat from an unknown man dressed as a cowboy, possibly an actor, on the steps of the Colorado State Capitol building in Denver, Colorado. Morely served as Governor of Colorado from 1925 to 1927, and was known as the Ku Klux Klan Governor during the political peak of the Klan in the 1920’s. Shows four men in cowboy outfits and suits. Morey Engle/Denver Public Library View of a burning cross on Ruby Hill, in Denver, Colorado; a man in Ku Klux Klan uniform and hood is to the side. 1920s Morey Engle/Denver Public Library Klansmen exchange documents with one another in front of a burning cross and an American flag as other members of the group watch at a rally of the Boulder Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in Boulder County, Colorado. 1925. Denver Public Library Panoramic night view of men, members of the KKK, in pointed hoods that cover the face and dark or white robes who stand, or sit on horseback, on Table Top Mountain near Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. Men in bandanna masks and street clothes kneel before a table with three hooded men; one holds an American flag. Many of the men salute. 1924-25 Senter collection/Denver Public Library Members of the KKK, in pointed hoods that cover the face and dark or white robes, stand around a tall cross in a boulder field on the summit of Pikes Peak in El Paso County, Colorado. They raise their arms in salute. Shows an American flag and the tops of automobiles. July 4, 1923 Senter collection/Denver Public Library Group portrait of men (with drums) and women in Ku Klux Klan costume and Revolutionary era uniforms, in Denver, Colorado. 1925 Denver Post/Denver Public Library Governor Clarence J. Morely poses in the Governor’s office. Morely served as Governor of Colorado from 1925 to 1927, and was known as the Ku Klux Klan Governor during the political peak of the Klan in the 1920’s. SHows a desk chair, and house plants and cut flowers. Morey Engle/Denver Public Library Ku Klux Klan members and burning crosses encircle a crowd of people at “Kastle Mountain” near Denver, Colorado. Spectators sit in folding chairs. 1925 Edgar I. Fuller/Denver Public Library Photomontage of Ku Klux Klan women members, who include Mrs. Gano Senter, as they prepare to distribute baskets of food for Thanksgiving in Denver, Colorado. One portion of the montage shows a baby, Master Richard, dressed in a robe and hood. Denver Post/Denver Public Library A cross burns at a night meeting of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) on Table Top Mountain near Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. Men in white robes and hoods encircle a group of men in street clothes who kneel in front of the burning cross. A container and cups on a tray sit behind rows of chairs. 1924-25 Senter collection/Denver Public Library Photomontage of the image of a man, a member of the Ku Klux Klan, in a white hood and robe, mounted on a horse draped with a white robe, superimposed upon an image of Castle Rock on South Table Mountain near Golden (Jefferson County), Colorado. 1923-24 Senter collection/Denver Public Library Ku Klux Klan members inspect the Miller Special race car owned by Ralph de Palma at Overland Park race track in Denver, Colorado. People crowd the bleachers. The driver, identified as Mr. Miller, wears a duster and holds a cap. (July 1925) Morey Engle/Denver Public Library Portrait of a members of the Ku Klux Klan probably in Colorado. They wear water-proof robes and hoods. Denver Public Library Members of the Ku Klux Klan march in a parade on Larimer Street in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes as spectators look on. Parked automobiles line the street. A sign on a building reads: “Western Clothing Co.” May 31, 1926 Denver Post/Denver Public Library Ku Klux Klan members light candles in metal cans buried in a dirt mound probably in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes. May 7, 1940 Denver Public Library View of a cross burned in Clarence F. Holmes’ yard by the KKK near his office at 2602 Welton Street in the Five Points neighborhood of Denver, Colorado. A sign on a nearby building reads: “Industrial Real[ty] Co. ” 1925 Clarence F. Holmes/Denver Public Library Studio portrait of women members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The women pose in white hoods and robes with cross emblems. One woman wears a dark cape. 1922-25? Denver Public Library Ku Klux Klan members march by office buildings on Larimer Street in Denver, Colorado. May 31, 1926 Edgar I. Fuller/Denver Public Library Two women and a man, members of the Ku Klux Klan, stand near a burning cross at night probably in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes. Denver News/Denver Public Library Ku Klux Klan members light candles in metal cans buried in a dirt mound probably in Denver, Colorado. They wear hoods and robes. May 7, 1940 We are taking a look back at the history of the Klan in Coloradoone of several western states that saw among the largest population of members in the early1920s. Denver Public Library

THE Ku Klux Klan returned to prominence thanks toDonald Trump who is cited as a factor in the rise ofright-wing groups in America after they backed him to become president. Theyre popping their robes back on, emboldened to broadcast their white supremacist message like never before. We explain everything you need to know about them. Getty Images In a nutshell, the Ku Klux Klan (or the KKK) is an extremist hate group who believeall non-Caucasian people are inferior to them. The group believes that America should be a nation that is free from drugs, homosexuality and immigration. Claiming to have extreme pride in their nation, they say that they are building a better society for everyone arguing on their website that they are a group not of hate but of love. Historically, black Americans have been the KKKs main target but more recently it has targeted Jews, immigrants, LGBT people and even Catholics. The groups history since its formation in 1865 can be divided into three eras. The first Klan, founded in Tennessee, was formed by former members of the Confederate army in around 1865. As a movement it was relatively short-lived at the outset but, as secret vigilantes, the Klan carried out acts of terrorism such as the lynchings, arson, murders, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks historically associated with the group. During the first era, these attacks were directed towards anyone who challenged white supremacy. The second Klan, founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1921, presented itself as a fraternal organisation employing full-time recruiters. At its peak, it was present in every state in America claiming to have at least 4 million members, operations in Canada, and even reportedly some recruiting activity in the UK. However, the KKKs popularity plummeted to only 30,000 members after a series of scandals. Getty Images The third revival came in the 1960s in opposition to the civil rights movement, which in the Klans eyes threatened segregation. The KKK name was used by a number of independent groups many members of which were convicted of murders of civil rights workers. One of the KKKs most violent actions was the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 an attack which killed four young girls. Today, it is thought there are at least 5,000 members of various KKK chapters in the United States. Getty Images The KKK refers to its beliefs and practices as Klankraft. Although they are a secretive group, there is some knowledge of its beliefs and practices which are all, of course, based on their white supremacist views. Incredible imagesgive a chilling insight into white supremacist culture that still exist in all corners of America. One of the most iconic symbols of the KKK is their white robes, which feature a conical mask. These were adopted by the first Klan, and were intended to add to the terror of their brutal attacks. As part of their rituals, the KKK carries out cross burnings. Most Christians would say burning a cross is sacrilege but the Klan believe it is lighting it, in a symbol of members faith. The KKK also use unique titles and greetings among their members with the leaders referred to as Grand or Imperial Wizards. To this day the KKK attend rallies, and due the United States Constitutions First Amendment, which relates to freedom of speech, their hate speech is legal. Facebook Frank Ancona, a self-described Imperial Wizard of the Missouri chapter of the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was found dead with a gunshot to the head in February 2017. Ancona, who wrote that the KKKs mission was to preserve white culture and heritage as well as to preserve the traditions passed down to our Klan from its founding in 1865,had been reported missing from his home afterhe told his wife Malissa that he was filing for a divorce. After being reported missing on February 10, his body was found near the Big River, with the Sheriff describing his death as a tragic and senseless act of violence. The 51-year-olds wife, Malissa, and her son Paul Edward Jinkerson Jr, 24, have both been charged with his murder. Authorities believe that Malissa broke into Franks safe to get at his guns so that she could kill him. Washington County coroner Brian DeClue told The Kansas City Star:It was not self-inflicted.This is now a homicide investigation. Donald Trumpblasted the KKK and neo-Nazis as repugnant after being criticised for not singling out the far-right violence following the horrific car assault inCharlottesville, Virginia. Far-right groups had gathered on August 12 to protest the decision to bring down the statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee. Activist Richard Spencer and formerKu Klux Klanleader David Duke attended the demonstrations. Heather Hyer, 32, died after being hit by the car, with her family saying she had been marching in a cry for social justice. During his statement at the White House, the Trump denounced racism as evil and singled out the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis as repugnant. He said: Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. He added: We are made by the same all mighty God. We must unite together to condemn racist, bigotry and violence. Trump attracted criticism for not being strong enough following the terrifying car assault. The President said: We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides. Its been going on for a long time in our country. Not Donald Trump, not Barack Obama. This has been going on for a long, long time. He added: Above all else, we must remember this truth no matter our colour, creed, religion or political party, we are all Americans first. David Duke was the Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, a chapter of the KKK, from 1974 to 1980. Before 1975, he was a member of the American Nazi party and is now a Republican. The Oklahoma native was Republican Louisiana State Representative from 1989 to 1992, and even a candidate in the Democratic Party presidential primaries in 1988. But in November 2016, he failed to win a seat in the Senate in Louisiana. AP:Associated Press The 56-year-old, who is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier, is against what he believes to be the Jewish control of the Federal Reserve Bank, US federal government and the media. He also believes in racial segregation. Following Donald Trumps election, David Dukethanked Wikileaks and Julian Assange describing the Wikileaks founder as a hero.

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